The secrets of the famous “man in the iron mask”. Photo

In 1698 the Bastille was taken prisoner, whose face was hiding a terrible iron mask.

His name was unknown, and in prison he was listed at number 64489001. Created an aura of mystery has spawned a lot of versions, anyone could be the masked man.

Of the transferred from another prison the prisoner superiors did not know anything. They were ordered to put the man in the mask in the dead of the camera and not to talk to him. After 5 years the prisoner died. He was buried under the name of Marchiali. All belongings of deceased burned, and the walls are scratched, not to leave any notes.

When in the late XVIII century under the onslaught of the French revolution, the Bastille fell, the new government has released documents that shed light on the fate of the prisoners. But about the man in the mask was not a single word.

Jesuit the Griff, a former chaplain in the Bastille at the end of the XVII century, wrote that the prison was taken prisoner in the velvet (not iron) mask. Besides, the prisoner wore it only when in the camera someone showed. From a medical point of view, if a prisoner was wearing a mask made of metal, it invariably disfigured his face. Iron mask “made” writers who shared their assumptions, what could be this mysterious prisoner.

For the first time about a prisoner in the mask mentioned in the “Secret notes of the Persian court,” published in 1745 in Amsterdam. According to the “Notes”, prisoner No. 64489001 was none other than the illegitimate son of Louis XIV and his mistress Louise of Francoise de La Valliere. He bore the title of Duke of Vermandois allegedly slapped his brother the Dauphin is Great for that and landed in jail. Actually, this version is implausible, as the illegitimate son of the French king died at the age of 16 in 1683. And the records of the Bastille Confessor the Jesuit Griff, unknown imprisoned in 1698, and he died in 1703.

Francois Voltaire in his “Age of Louis XIV” written in 1751, was first pointed out that the Iron Mask could be the twin brother of the sun King. To avoid problems with succession, one of the boys was brought up secretly. When Louis XIV learned about the existence of his brother, condemned him to perpetual imprisonment. This hypothesis so logically explain the presence of the prisoner mask that it has become the most popular among other theories, and subsequently was repeatedly filmed Directors.

There is an opinion that the mask was forced to wear the famous Italian adventurer Ercole Antonio Mattioli. Italian in 1678, entered into an agreement with Louis XIV, who pledged to make his the Duke to surrender the fortress of Casale to the king in exchange for the reward of 10,000 Scudi. Money, the adventurer had taken, but the contract is not fulfilled. Moreover, Mattioli gave this a state secret even in multiple countries for a single fee. For this treason, the French government sent him to the Bastille, forcing him to wear a mask.

Some researchers have advanced quite so implausible version of the man in the iron mask. On one of them, this prisoner could be the Russian Emperor Peter I. in that period, Peter was in Europe with his diplomatic mission (a”Grand Embassy”). Autocrat supposedly imprisoned in the Bastille, but instead was sent home figurehead. They say, how else to explain the fact that the Tsar had left Russia piously revered traditions of a Christian, and went back to the typical European, who wished to break the Patriarchal foundations of Russia.